Taking Back!

 Someone once said that writing is easy; finding the right words is hard. I’ve struggled with that most of this year.

I’ve written a lot of first paragraphs. Then something else sets me off. I write a new first paragraph on a different subject, and something else sets me off. I seldom get to the second paragraph.

If you can’t guess what and who is setting me off, you haven’t been paying attention.

Project 2025 called for as many massive disruptions to the government as possible, as quickly as possible. The strategy was to overwhelm the legislature, the press, citizens, and foreign allies. It is working, and that isn’t a good thing for the country, its citizens, or the world.

Where to start? 

My current lament is with three interknitted areas: Democracy, Government, and the Presidency.

We have done a reasonable job of being a democratic republic for nearly twenty-five decades. There were some not-so-good times, but we try to make the Union more perfect, even if it often takes too long to right the wrongs.

Democracies, by their nature, are not efficient forms of government; they are meant to be messy. They require constant discussion, forever disagreements, and the best-for-now compromises. The current administration doesn’t believe that axiom, and I’m not sure the out-party does either.

The current poohbah thinks he has the right to govern by fiat, executive decree. His minions do whatever they can to strengthen the role of the executive to the detriment of the legislative and judicial branches.

The Founders were afraid of such a strong leader. After all, they had just won a revolution that ousted a king. They didn’t want another one. We go back once again to Madison, who tells us in The Federalist, No. 47, that “ The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” 

Let us consider the purpose of our government. We all learned and maybe memorized the words, “…to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity …” To accomplish these great aims, Article I of the Constitution gives  the power to make laws and the power of the purse strings to the legislature. Article II instructed the President to execute those laws and spend the money as instructed. With few exceptions, a president doesn’t have the authority to spend money as s/he wishes or make laws by decree. S/He doesn’t have the power to dissolve government departments established by Congress.

It is a simple concept - the government is designed to provide services to the people. Providing for the general welfare includes having a strong public health component. It is responsible for the military to protect the nation. It should bolster the educational strength of the nation, preserve our natural resources and national parks for the pleasure of its citizens. It ensures a wide separation between religions and the state. It encourages basic scientific research, supports the arts. It encourages these institutions. It doesn’t tear them down or tear them apart. The current administration doesn’t believe that axiom.

Many of the Founders warned against strong political parties. But those that governed from the middle have been a strength for our democracy. They generally limit the ambitions of those who want to lead from the edge of the ideological wings. Calvin Coolidge told us that “It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.” We miss that humility today and suffer the consequences.

While I tend to lean just a tad to the left of center, I’m registered as “No Party Preference,” but I’m wondering if that designation really fits my mood today. I might be a Libertarian for all I know, or even an Independent. The lack of a party affiliation allows me to put “a plague on both their houses,” without guilt.

The Republican Party began its takeover of the nation decades ago, mostly under the radar. They built strong alliances at the county and state levels, where election districts are formed and local laws enacted.

Donald Trump used the party to gain his first term, took over the party with threats of primary challenges for those who didn’t agree with him, accumulated successful oligarchs willing to bend a knee to change power structures in their favor, and smartly identified the angst of the middle class in the heartland who disliked the changing culture and that of the skilled tradesperson who had lost their jobs to other countries. He expertly attracted those who feared their white advantage was ebbing, to the point of carrying guns to a Capitol incursion.

All the while, the Democrat Party smothered its best and brightest in ideological quagmires that required fidelity to positions that never became vote-getting messages. They became the party of the university faculty lounge, the city elites, and the tech workforce. They forgot the farmer, the small business owner, the ones losing jobs to higher-skilled young people. They ran on issues the populist didn’t think affected them, and didn’t raise up the issues that did. The degree of loss at the Electoral College level devastated them to the point that five months later, they still couldn’t identify a leader or a message to take to the voters. They have cowered at meeting constituents in public; too scary for them.

So we are living in a dystopian era governed by a near cultlike group that tears at the strings of our institutions to unravel the very fabric of the nation only to be countered by a floundering opposition party that doesn’t know what to make of itself, whose ancient leaders won’t invite the younger crowd to the table or knows how to reclaim a vestige of recognition among the electorate.

So what are we going to do?

The saving grace seems to be the millions of people who are taking to the streets to protest the tearing apart of the government that they witness daily. It seems there is a big difference between voting for change and seeing destruction. The rise is an effort to remind those who support autocratic and oligarchic style government that, in the end, this is a country of and for We The People.

The Democrats don’t control any branch of the government, so they must rely on the people to rise up and for the judiciary to do its job. The opposition is filing one case after another each day that questions the legal authority of the president’s actions. They are winning most of them. Many cases are already at the appellate level. From there, they will move to the Supreme Court for final determination. Many of the administration’s actions are designed specifically to evaluate the limits of presidential power and seem to assume that SCOTUS will validate their efforts.

But we have this annoying thing called the Constitution, designed to rein in the bad actors in the executive branch and bad laws drawn in the legislative branch. Marbury v. Madison told us that the Constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says. Its power is derived from the willingness of the people to follow its rulings. It doesn’t have an army. But …

If SCOTUS hands down a decision and the executive branch doesn’t obey it, we will have lost our democracy for sure and may never reclaim it. That is a bridge too far, but the first months of the current administration have caused an upheaval unlike any since the days of Andrew Jackson or the Civil War. They want to test the limits of presidential power.

For the generations who lived with the notion that you get up in the morning to face the world and make it better, their ideals are being destroyed before their eyes. 

Where to start?

 Lawmakers listen to their constituents. Let’s make sure that we are heard. They will listen –

·         Especially if they are in the streets. That’s how the civil rights movement succeeded. That is how we can save our democracy.

·         We can pressure the legislature and the administration to change their methods. That involves demanding change and attending town hall meetings with Members of Congress.

·         We can pressure our aged leaders to give the reins to those who can relate to the younger generation’s needs.

·         We can demand that leaders are active on the social media that younger folks use.

·         We can insist that members of Congress hold live Town Halls.

·         We can fill the Letters section of newspapers, digital or pulp, with information about our aims.

·         We can attend opposition rallies.

·         We can  gather in small groups to keep like-minded folks informed and to gin up enthusiasm for action.

 

We the people haven’t been in the streets since the sixties and seventies. Most have forgotten how to do it, and at least two generations have never experienced rising up to demand better from our government for our nation. It will be a steep learning curve, but we can’t let the destruction continue much longer. Nor can we allow the destruction of our economy and the world order to continue.

 

 

 

Autocracy Blinked!

 There was one thing on the ballot in last week’s elections – Democracy.

Yes, there were real people seeking office, but they were stand-ins for the real issue. The candidates represented two very divergent views about America’s future, our way of life, and our institutions. In the end, we are still a much-divided nation on many counts, but more united about the importance of our democracy.

The U.S. Senate is split 50/49 with a run-off election to follow in December for the remaining seat. The House is nearly evenly divided, with leadership still in question. It may be another week before all the election results are tabulated.

 

In nearly every election, even in the “battleground states,” the losers called the victors and publicly conceded defeat. Civility returned to our election process. Sometimes the small things matter.

 

In the “battleground states” every “election denier” who ran for Secretary of State was vanquished. Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, and Independents, divided on so many issues, united to keep our election processes fair. Democracy prevailed.

 A couple of months ago the Supreme Court overturned a basic right that we believed had been settled fifty years ago. The court ruled that the Federal government did not have the authority to enact a law that allowed abortions because that right was not enumerated in the Constitution.

New voters registered by the hundreds of thousands across the country and then expressed their anger at having a basic right torn from them. In five states, voters approved state constitutional amendments and other laws that make abortion legal.

 Dobbs v. Jackson did more, however, than overturn perceived freedom. Two justices suggested that they would support overturning other non-enumerated rights based on the 14^th Amendment. That may suggest the possibility of overturning the right to gay marriage, contraception, privacy, and other freedoms we take for granted. It foretells a possible reworking of the Federal government’s relationship with the States.

Dobbs also puts stare-decisis into question. Our entire legal system is based on the idea that precedent is the compass for judicial rulings. What now?

Thirteen states passed antiabortion laws that took effect soon after the Court ruled against Roe v. Wade. Those laws will provide full employment for lawyers for years to come. It took fifty years for antiabortion supporters to reach the point where the courts were filled with sympathetic judges and justices. and it may take that many years to reverse the trend unless Congress codifies Roe into a national law.

The court’s reversal of Roe raises this question: If a court can tell a person what not to do with their body, can they tell them what to do with their bodies, which is the antithesis of freedom, as we have known it. Italy tried that approach. Napoleon tried that approach. Both needed more men to fight their wars. Both attempts failed.

 Our country has been tossed and turned in a not-so-good way in the last six years. Respect for our institutions was obliterated, our standing on the world stage diminished, and party loyalty was made more important than the common good and a court that demonstrated that basic liberties can be erased ever so quickly.

 David Brooks, a NYT opinion writer, speaks of the start of an effort to build a wall around the Nationalists’ effort to bring an autocratic government to our country. The people voted against extremism. In California, for instance, the proposition to enshrine the right to abortion in the Constitution is winning in districts where antiabortion candidates are winning: democracy over party.

The stakes were exceedingly high in this election because it was about the future of our democracy.

 Democracy won.

 

 

Counting Votes!

 Conundrums present themselves when you least want them. The unexpected ones are the worst. Even worse are those whose answers are an enigma. It is frustrating to hear arguments against something when there shouldn’t be arguments against it.

Last week we saw Exhibit One of this thinking when the U.S. Senate voted against a bill to halt the destruction of voting rights that is sweeping the country. Free and fair elections are no longer the hallmark of the “greatest democracy on Earth.” Senators actually debated the idea and decided that we don’t need them anymore.

In States across the country, state legislatures are enacting laws to dampen the ability of citizens to cast their votes in an easy and orderly fashion. The argument goes something like this: the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the rightful winner for reasons unsupported by facts. In many states the “powers that be” adjusted voting practices to accommodate the vagaries of the COVID pandemic. Voting by mail was encouraged, early voting was encouraged, and ballot drop boxes were added to make voting easier. Even before voting began there was a drumbeat from the White House that voting by mail was a way to steal the election and that the only way the President could lose was if the voting system was rigged.

Some states counted their ballots as many as three times. State legislatures appointed partisan investigators (Cyber Ninja was one) to recount the ballots, to ensure that the voting machines were operating properly and that no foreign government was interfering with the voting process.

No voter fraud was identified, the ballot counting had been accurate, the machines operated properly, and foreign governments didn’t interfere with the elections. So, state legislatures are passing bills to ensure that what never happened never happens again. In addition, some states are enacting laws that let the legislature change the election results if they have the slightest inkling that there was a “steal.”

The belief in a stolen election ignited the fuse that rocketed people up the stairs of our temple of democracy on January 6, 2021. The percentage of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen is higher today than a year ago, 70%. The “Big Lie” has traction.

“That in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility: because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie … It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have  the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”[i]

There was some fraud after the election, however. In five states people posing as Electors signed nearly identical certificates of election, naming Trump and Pence as the winners in their states and sent them to the national archives, insisting that they be counted by the Congress. Some senators even objected to counting the real certificates. The Vice President had to change the usual words of acceptance to ensure that the real certificates were counted.

Democracy, unlike other forms of government, relies on people believing in the concept and supporting the institutions that bind us. The concept of fair elections was a given, we took it for granted that it would always be there, that it is in our DNA. Maybe not so much anymore.

A wide divide between political parties is a risk to our way of life. When average citizens express a strong belief that the voting system is corrupt, we are on the verge of serious disunity and even breakup. There are a number of actions in the political arena that we can disagree about, some serious and some, well, just political. The one thing that bound us for more than two centuries was our belief that we could vote and that our vote would be counted and that would determine the winners and losers.

The idea of rigged elections is now a major strategy for creating doubt about the election process. In a mid-January special election in the Palm Beach, FL district, Ms. Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat, won 78% of the votes. The Republican candidate refused to concede because the vote may have been tainted.

Voting should be an easy four-step process: registration, voting, counting the votes and declaring a winner. Each of those steps should be easy steps. In our state, when a teenager applies for a driver's license they are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18 years old. When there is an election, each registered voter receives a ballot in the mail. When they have voted, they mail it back or drop it off at secure locations. On Election Day the votes are counted, the winners jubilate and the losers congratulate. Done.

Anything more complicated than that is an infringement on the democratic process.

 

 

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[i] Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925